Sunday, March 8, 2009

He's no Nirvana baby

The other day Ben inadvertently had his first underwater experience. I'd intended that he'd first go underwater at our baby swimming classes in a few weeks, but as they say, the best laid plans...

Bathing Ben is starting to get annoying, because he's obviously outgrown his baby tub, but is nowhere near ready for the bathtub. The end result is that I and a 5 foot radius around the sink get soaked every bath time. During his bath on Monday I gave him a rubber duckie to play with, which I thought might distract him and lead to less splashing, but oh, how wrong I was.

Also on Monday I finally tackled Ben's cradle cap. He's had cradle cap (which, for those not hip to the lingo, is basically baby dandruff) almost since he was born. For some reason I've been lazy and the only thing I've done to alleviate it is try to scrape some off during his baths, but that didn't work too well. I finally searched the all-knowing, all-seeing internet and one of the easiest solutions I found was to rub baby oil on his head, let it sit for a few minutes and then use a comb to brush it away. Which is exactly what I did, but I used a little too much oil. I know that because 45 minutes later his hair still looked wet, when normally the wisps take approximately 4.5 seconds to dry.

I really didn't want to give him another bath, because I'd already taken my shower and I didn't feel like braving the tsunami. But we were going to a wedding the next day and Ben looked like a greasy used car salesman. So, I quickly went through the five stages of grief and when I hit acceptance I got Ben ready for his second bath of the day. However, since I was feeling lazy (this seems to be a theme), I decided not to use the baby tub. I decided to use the sink (dun, dun, DUUUUUUUN).

I'd tried to give Ben a sink bath about a month ago when the baby tub started getting ridiculous, but it was a total disaster. He couldn't hold himself up enough and the sink was too wet to prop him, so I had to hold him the entire time. Cue my aching back. However! In the last month Ben has improved about 1000% in his sitting, so I figured it might work this time.

I readied the sink and then I readied the boy. I slowly lowered him into the lukewarm water and put butt to porcelain. Then I let go. Success! He was able to hold himself up! So I gave him the duckie and the splashing commenced. Then I turned around to grab the shampoo. If my life were a horror movie, that would've been the moment the ominous music started and people yelled, "No!! Don't do it!!" For that is when Ben's fervor to grab the duckie just out of reach caused his butt to slip and for him to slide completely under the water. Luckily I hadn't stepped away, only turned around, so I was able to grab him within a second. Of course he completely flipped out, but he was fine. I calmed him down and then put him back in the sink, just so he wouldn't be totally scarred for life on sink baths. I held him the entire time, though. Sink: 2, Katie: 0. The up side of all this is that the baby oil totally worked. The cradle cap is gone!